Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Working for a phase transition to an open commons-based knowledge society: Interview with Michel Bauwens

Today a summit starts in Quito, Ecuador that will discuss ways
in which the country can transform itself into an open commons-based knowledge
society. The team that put together the proposals is led by Michel Bauwens from
the Foundation
for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives. What is the
background to this plan, and how likely is it that it will bear fruit? With the hope of finding out I spoke recently
to Bauwens.

Michel Bauwens

One
interesting phenomenon to emerge from the Internet has been the growth of free
and open movements, including free and open source software, open politics, open
government, open data, citizen journalism, creative commons, open science, open
educational resources (OER), open access
etc.

While
these movements often set themselves fairly limited objectives (e.g. “freeing the refereed literature”) some network
theorists maintain that the larger phenomenon they represent has the potential
not just to replace traditional closed and proprietary practices with more open
and transparent approaches, and not just to subordinate narrow commercial
interests to the greater needs of communities and larger society but, since the
network enables ordinary citizens to collaborate together on large meaningful
projects in a distributed way (and absent traditional hierarchical organisations),
it could have a significant impact on the way in which societies and economies
organise themselves.

Former
librarian and Belgian network theorist Michel Bauwens goes so far
as to say that by enabling peer-to-peer (P2P)
collaboration, the Internet has created a new model for the future development
of human society. In addition to peer production, he explained to me
in 2006,
the network also encourages the creation of peer property (i.e. commonly owned
property), and peer governance (governance based on civil society rather than
representative democracy).

Moreover,
what is striking about peer production is that it emerges and operates outside
traditional power structures and market systems. And when those operating in
this domain seek funding they increasingly turn not to the established banking
system, but to new P2P practices like crowdfunding and social lending.

When
in 2006 I asked Bauwens what the new world he envisages would look like in
practice he replied, “I see a P2P civilisation that would have to be
post-capitalist, in the sense that human survival cannot co-exist with a system
that destroys the biosphere; but it will nevertheless have a thriving
marketplace. At the core of such a society — where immaterial production is the
primary form — would be the production of value through non-reciprocal peer
production, most likely supported through a basic income.”

Unrealistic and utopian?

Critics
dismiss Bauwens’ ideas as unrealistic and utopian, and indeed in the eight
years since I first spoke with him much has happened that might seem to support
the sceptics. Rather than being discredited by the 2008 financial crisis, for
instance, traditional markets and neoliberalism have tightened their grip on
societies, in all parts of the world.

At
the same time, the democratic potential and openness Bauwens sees as
characteristic of the network is being eroded in a number of ways. While social
networking platforms like Facebook enable the kind of sharing and collaboration
Bauwens sees lying at the heart of a P2P society, for instance, there is a
growing sense that these services are in fact exploitative, not least because the
significant value created by the users of these services is being monetised not
for the benefit of the users themselves, but for the exclusive benefit of the large
corporations that own them.

We
have also seen a huge growth in proprietary mobile devices, along with the
flood of apps needed to run on them — a development that caused Wired’s former editor-in-chief Chris Anderson to conclude that we are witnessing
a dramatic move “from the wide-open Web to semi closed platforms”. And this new
paradigm, he added, simply “reflects the inevitable course of capitalism”.

In
other words, rather than challenging or side-lining the traditional market and
neoliberalism, the network seems destined to be appropriated by it — a
likelihood that for many was underlined by the recent striking down of the US net
neutrality regulations.

It
would also appear that some of the open movements are gradually being appropriated
and/or subverted by commercial interests (e.g. the open access and open
educational resources
movements).

While
conceding that a capitalist version of P2P has begun to emerge, Bauwens argues
that this simply makes it all the more important to support and promote social
forms of P2P. And here, he suggests, the signs are positive, with the number of
free and open movements continuing to grow and the P2P model bleeding out of
the world of “immaterial production” to encompass material production too —
e.g. with the open design and open hardware movements, a
development encouraged by the growing use of 3D printers.

Bauwens
also points to a growth in mutualisation, and the emergence of new practices
based around the sharing of physical resources and equipment.

Interestingly,
these latter developments are often less visible than one might expect because much
of what is happening in this area appears to be taking place outside the view
of mainstream media in the global north.

Finally,
says Bauwens, the P2P movement, or commoning (as some prefer to call it), is becoming
increasingly politicised. Amongst other things, this has seen the rise of new political
parties like the various Pirate Parties.

Above
all, Bauwens believes that the long-term success of P2P is assured because its
philosophy and practices are far more sustainable than the current market-based
system. “Today, we consider nature infinite and we believe that infinite
resources should be made scarce in order to protect monopolistic players,” he
says below. “Tomorrow, we need to consider nature as a finite resource, and we
should respect the abundance of nature and the human spirit.”

Periphery to mainstream

And
as the need for sustainability becomes ever more apparent, more people will
doubtless want to listen to what Bauwens has to say. Indeed, what better sign
that P2P could be about to move from the periphery to the mainstream than an invitation
Bauwens received last year from three Ecuadorian governmental institutions, who
asked him to lead a team tasked with coming up with proposals for transitioning
the country to a society based on free and open knowledge.

The
organisation overseeing the project is the FLOK Society (free, libre,
open knowledge). As “commoner” David Bollierexplained when the
project was announced, Bauwens’ team was asked to look at many interrelated
themes, “including open education; open innovation and science; ‘arts and
meaning-making activities’; open design commons; distributed manufacturing; and
sustainable agriculture; and open machining.”

Bollier
added, “The research will also explore enabling legal and institutional
frameworks to support open productive capacities; new sorts of open technical
infrastructures and systems for privacy, security, data ownership and digital
rights; and ways to mutualise the physical infrastructures of collective life
and promote collaborative consumption.”

In
other words, said Bollier, Ecuador “does not simply assume — as the ‘developed
world’ does — that more iPhones and microwave ovens will bring about
prosperity, modernity and happiness.”

Rather
it is looking for sustainable solutions that foster “social and territorial
equality, cohesion, and integration with diversity.”

The
upshot: In April Bauwens’ team published a series of proposals intended to
transition Ecuador to what he calls a sustainable civic P2P economy. And these proposals
will be discussed at a summit to be held this week in the capital of Ecuador (Quito).

“As
you can see from our proposals, we aim for a simultaneous transformation of
civil society, the market and public authorities,” says Bauwens. “And we do
this without inventing or imposing utopias, but by extending the working
prototypes from the commoners and peer producers themselves.”

But
Bauwens knows that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and he realises that he has
taken on a huge task, one fraught with difficulties. Even the process of
putting the proposals together has presented him and his team with considerable
challenges. Shortly after they arrived in Ecuador, for instance, they were told
that the project had been defunded (funding that was fortunately later
reinstated). And for the moment it remains unclear whether many (or any) of the
FLOK proposals will ever see the light of day.

Bauwens
is nevertheless upbeat. Whatever the outcome in Ecuador, he says, an important first
stab has been made at creating a template for transitioning a nation state from
today’s broken model to a post-capitalist social knowledge society.

“What
we have now that we didn’t have before, regardless of implementation in
Ecuador, is the first global commons-oriented transition plan, and several
concrete legislative proposals,” he says. “They are far from perfect, but they
will be a reference that other locales, cities, (bio)regions and states will be
able to make their own adapted versions of it.”

In the Q&A below Bauwens discusses the project
in more detail, including the background to it, and the challenges that he and
the FLOK Society have faced.

The interview begins

RP: We last spoke in 2006 when you discussed your
ideas on a P2P (peer-to-peer) society (which I think David Bollier refers to as
“commoning”). Briefly, what has been learned since then about the opportunities
and challenges of trying to create a P2P society, and how have your thoughts on
P2P changed/developed as a result?

MB: At the time, P2P dynamics were
mostly visible in the process of “immaterial production”, i.e. productive
communities that created commons of knowledge and code. The trend has since
embraced material production itself, through open design that is
linked to the production of open hardware machinery.

Another
trend is the mutualisation of physical resources. We've seen on the one hand an
explosion in the mutualisation of open workspaces (hackerspaces, fab labs, co-working) and the
explosion of the so-called sharing economy and collaborative consumption.

This
is of course linked to the emergence of distributed practices and technologies
for finance (crowd funding, social lending); and for
machinery itself (3D printing and other
forms of distributed
manufacturing).
Hence the emergence and growth of P2P dynamics is now clearly linked to the
“distribution of everything”.

There
is today no place we go where social P2P initiatives are not developing and not
exponentially growing. P2P is now a social fact.

Since
the crisis of 2008, we are also seeing much more clearly the political and
economic dimension of P2P. There is now both a clearly capitalist P2P sector
(renting and working for free is now called sharing, which is putting downward
pressure on income levels) and a clearly social one. First of all, the generalised crisis of our
economic system has pushed more people to search for such practical
alternatives. Second, most P2P dynamics are clearly controlled by economic
forces, i.e. the new “netarchical” (hierarchy of the network) platforms.

Finally,
we see the increasing politicisation of P2P, with the emergence of Pirate Parties, network
parties (Partido X in Spain)
etc.

We
have now to decide more clearly than before whether we want more autonomous
peer production, i.e. making sure that the domination of the free social logic
of permissionless aggregation is directly linked to the capacity to generate
self-managed livelihoods, or, if we are happy with a system in which this value
creation is controlled and exploited by platform owners and other
intermediaries.

The
result of all of this is that my own thoughts are now more directly political.
We have developed concrete proposals and strategies to create P2P-based
counter-economies that are de-linked from the accumulation of capital, but
focused on cooperative accumulation and the autonomy of commons production.

RP:
Indeed and last year you were asked to lead
a team to come up with proposals to “remake the roots of
Ecuador’s economy, setting off a transition into a society of free and open
knowledge”. As I understand it, this would be based on the principles of open
networks, peer production and commoning. Can you say something about the
project and what you hope it will lead to? Has the Ecuadoran government itself
commissioned you, or a government or non-government agency in Ecuador?

The legitimacy and logic of the project comes from
the National Plan of Ecuador, which is
centred around the concept of Good Living (Buen Vivir), which is a non-reductionist, non-exclusive
material way to look at the economy and social life, inspired by the
traditional values of the indigenous people of the Andes. The aim of FLOK is to
add “Good Knowledge” as an enabler and facilitator of the good life.

The important point to make is that it is impossible
for countries and people that are still in neo-colonial dependencies to evolve
to more fair societies without access to shareable knowledge. And this
knowledge, expressed in diverse commons that correspond to the different
domains of social life (education, science, agriculture, industry), cannot
itself thrive without also looking at both the material and immaterial
conditions that will enable their creation and expansion.

FLOK summit

RP: To this end you have put together a transition
plan. This includes a series of
proposals (available here), and a main
report (here). I assume
your plan might or might not be taken up by Ecuador. What is the procedure for
taking it forward, and how optimistic are you that Ecuador will embark on the
transition you envisage?

MB:The transition plan provides a framework for moving from
an economy founded on what we call “cognitive” and “netarchical” capitalism (based
respectively on the exploitation through IP rents or social media platforms) to
a “mature P2P-based civic economy”.

The logic here is that the dominant economic
forms today are characterised by a value crisis, one in which value is
extracted but it doesn’t flow back to the creators of the value. The idea is to
transition to an economy in which this value feedback loop is restored.

So about fifteen of our policy proposals
apply this general idea to specific domains, and suggest how open knowledge
commons can be created and expanded in these particular areas.

We published these proposals on April 1st
in co-ment, an open source software that allows
people to comment on specific concepts, phrases or paragraphs.

This week (May 27th to 30th)
the crucial FLOK summit is taking place to discuss the proposals. This will
bring together government institutions, social movement advocates, and experts,
from both Ecuador and abroad.

The idea is to devote three days to reaching
a consensus amongst these different groups, and then try and get agreement with
the governmental institutions able to carry out the proposals.

So there will be two filters: the summit
itself, and then the subsequent follow-up, which will clearly face opposition
from different interests.

This is not an easy project, since it is not
possible to achieve all this by decree.

RP: Earlier this year you made a series of videos discussing
the issues arising from what you are trying to do — which is essentially to create “a
post-capitalist social knowledge society”, or “open commons-based knowledge
society”. In one video you discuss three different value regimes, and I note you
referred to these in your last answer — i.e. cognitive capitalism, netarchical
capitalism and a civic P2P economy. Can you say a little more about how these
three different regimes differ and why in your view P2P is a better approach
than the other two?

MB: I define cognitive capitalism
as a regime in which value is generated through a combination of rent extraction
from the control of intellectual property and the control of global production
networks, and expressed in terms of monetisation.

What
we have learned is that the democratisation of networks, which also provides a
new means of production and value distribution, means that this type of value
extraction is harder and harder to achieve, and it can only be maintained
either by increased legal suppression (which erodes legitimacy) and outright
technological sabotage (DRM). Both of
these strategies are not sustainable in the long term.

What
we have also learned is that the network has caused a new model to emerge, one adapted
to the P2P age, and which I call netarchical capitalism, i.e. “the hierarchy of
the network”. In this model, we see the direct exploitation of human
cooperation by means of proprietary platforms that both enable and exploit
human cooperation. Crucially, while their value is derived from our
communication, sharing and cooperation (an empty platform has no value), and on
the use value that we are exponentially creating (Google, Facebook don’t
produce the content, we do), the exchange value is exclusively extracted by the
platform owners. This is unsustainable because it is easy to see that a regime
in which the creators of the value get no income at all from their creation is
not workable in the long; and so it poses problems for capitalism. After all, who
is going to buy goods if they have no income?

So
the key issue is: how do we recreate the value loop between creation,
distribution, and income? The answer for me is the creation of a mature P2P
civic economy that combines open contributory communities, ethical
entrepreneurial coalitions able to create livelihoods for the commoners, and for-benefit
institutions that can “enable and empower the infrastructure of cooperation”.

Think
of the core model of our economy as the Linux economy writ large, but one in
which the enterprises are actually in the hands of the value creators
themselves. Imagine this micro-economic model on the macro scale of a whole
society. Civil society becomes a series of commonses with citizens as
contributors; the shareholding market becomes an ethical stakeholder
marketplace; and the state becomes a partner state, which “enables and empowers
social production” through the commonication of public services and
public-commons partnerships.

Challenges and distrust

RP: As you indicated earlier, it is not an easy
project that you have embarked on in Ecuador, particularly as it is an attempt
to intervene at the level of a nation state. Gordon Cook has said of the
project: “it barely got off the ground before it began to crash into some of
the anticipated obstacles.” Can you say something about these obstacles and how
you have been overcoming them?

MB: It is true that the project
started with quite negative auspices. It became the victim of internal
factional struggles within the government, for instance, and was even defunded for
a time after we arrived; the institutions failed to pay our wages for nearly
three months, which was a serious issue for the kind of precarious scholar-activists
that make up the research team.

However,
in March (when one of the sides in the dispute lost, i.e. the initial sponsor Carlos Prieto, rector of
the IAEN), we got renewed commitment from the other two institutions. Since then
political support has increased, and the summit is about to get underway.

As
for Gordon, he became a victim of what we will politely call a series of
misinterpreted engagements for the funding of his participation, and it is
entirely understandable that he has become critical of the process.

The
truth is that the project was hugely contradictory in many different ways, but
this is the reality of the political world everywhere, not just in Ecuador.

Indeed, the Ecuadorian government is itself engaged
in sometimes contradictory policies and is perceived by civil society to have
abandoned many of the early ideas of the civic movement that brought it to
power. So, in our attempts at broader participation we have been stifled by the
distrust many civic activists have for the government, and the sincerity of our
project has been doubted.

Additionally, social P2P dynamics, which of course
exist as in many other countries, are not particularly developed in their
modern, digitally empowered forms in Ecuador. It has also not helped that the
management of the project has been such that the research team has not been
able to directly connect with the political leaders in order to test their real
engagement. This has been hugely frustrating.

On the positive side, we have been entirely free to
conduct our research and formulate our proposals, and it is hard not to believe
that the level of funding the project has received reflects a certain degree of
commitment.

So
the summit is back on track, and we have received renewed commitments. Clearly,
however, the proof of the pudding will be in the summit and its aftermath.

Whatever the eventual outcome, it has always been
my conviction that the formulation of the first ever integrated Commons
Transition Plan (which your readers will find here) legitimised by a nation-state, takes the P2P and commons movement to a
higher geopolitical plane. As such, it can be seen as part of the global
maturation of the P2P/commons approach, even if it turns out not to work
entirely in Ecuador itself.

RP: I believe that one of the issues that has
arisen in putting together the FLOK proposals is that Ecuadorians who live in
rural areas are concerned that a system based on sharing could see their
traditional knowledge appropriated by private interests. Can you say something
about this fear and how you believe your plan can address such concerns?

MB: As you are aware, traditional
communities have suffered from systematic biopiracy over the last
few decades, with western scientists studying their botanical knowledge,
extracting patentable scientific results from it, and then commercialising it
in the West.

So
fully shareable licenses like the GPL would keep the knowledge in a commons,
but would still allow full commercialisation without material benefits flowing
back to Ecuador. So what we are proposing is a discussion about a new type of
licensing, which we call Commons-Based Reciprocity
Licensing.
This idea was first pioneered with the Peer Production License as conceived by Dmytri
Kleiner.

Such
licences would be designed for a particular usage, say biodiversity research in
a series of traditional communities. It allows for free sharing
non-commercially, commercial use by not-for-profit entities, and even caters for
for-profit entities who contribute back. Importantly, it creates a frontier for
for-profits who do not contribute back, and asks them to pay.

What
is key here is not just the potential financial flow, but to introduce the
principle of reciprocity in the marketplace, thereby creating an ethical
economy. The idea is that traditional communities can create their own ethical
vehicles, and create an economy from which they can also benefit, and under
their control.

This
concept is beginning to get attention from open machining communities. However,
the debate in Ecuador is only starting. Paradoxically, traditional communities
are today either looking for traditional IP protection, which doesn't really
work for them, or for no-sharing options.

So
we really need to develop intermediary ethical solutions for them that can
benefit them while also putting them in the driving seat.

Fundamental reversal of our civilisation

RP: In today’s global economy, where practically
everyone and everything seems to be interconnected and subject to the rules of
neoliberalism and the market, is it really possible for a country like Ecuador
to go off in such a different direction on its own?

MB: A full transition is indeed
probably a global affair, but the micro-transitions need to happen at the
grassroots, and a progressive government would be able to create exemplary
policies and projects that show the way.

Ecuador
is in a precarious neo-colonial predicament and subject to the pressures of the
global market and the internal social groups that are aligned with it. There
are clear signs that since 2010 the Ecuadorian government has moved away from
the original radical ideas expressed in the Constitution and the National Plan,
as we hear from nearly every single civic movement that we've spoken with.

The
move for a social knowledge economy is of strategic importance to de-colonialise
Ecuador but this doesn't mean it will actually happen. However, the progressive
forces have not disappeared entirely from the government institutions.

As such, it is really difficult to predict
how successful this project will be. But as I say, given the investment the
government has made in the process we believe there will be some progress. My
personal view is that the combination of our political and theoretical
achievements, and the existence of the policy papers, means that even with
moderate progress in the laws and on the ground, we can be happy that we will
have made a difference.

So
most likely the local situation will turn out to be a hybrid mix of acceptance
and refusal of our proposals, and most certainly the situation is not mature
enough to accept the underlying logic of our Commons Transition Plan in toto.

In
other words, the publication and the dialogue about the plan itself, and some
concrete actions, legislative frameworks, and pilot projects, are the best we
can hope for. What this will do is give real legitimacy to our approach and
move the commons transition to the geo-political stage. Can we hope for more?

Personally,
I believe that even if only 20% of our proposals are retained for action, I
think we can consider it a relative success. This is the very first time such
an even partial transition will have happened at the scale of the nation and, as
I see it, it gives legitimacy to a whole new set of ideas about societal
transition. So I believe it is worthy of our engagement.

We
have to accept that the realities of power politics are incompatible with the
expectations of a clean process for such a fundamental policy change. But we
hope that some essential proposals of the project will make a difference, both
for the people of Ecuador and all those that are watching the project.

For
the future though, I have to say I seriously question the idea of trying to
“hack a society” which was the initial philosophy of the project and of the
people who hired us. You can't hack a society, since a society is not an
executable program. Political change needs a social and political basis, and it
was very weak from the start in this case.

This
is why I believe that future projects should first focus on the lower levels of
political organisation, such as cities and regions, where politics is closer to
the needs of the population. History though, is always full of surprises, and
bold gambles can yield results. So FLOK may yet surprise the sceptics.

RP: If Ecuador did adopt your plan (or a
significant part of it), what in your view would be the implications, for
Ecuador, for other countries, and for the various free and open movements? What
would be the implications if none of it were adopted?

MB:As I say, at this stage I see
only the possibility of a few legal advances and some pilot projects as the
best case scenario. These, however, would be important seeds for Ecuador, and would
give extra credibility to our effort.

I
realise it may surprise you to hear me say it, but I don't see this as crucial.
I say this because, we already have thousands of projects in the world that are
engaged in peer production and commons transitions, and this deep trend is not
going to change. The efforts to change the social and economic logic will go on
with or without Ecuador.

As
I noted, what we have now that we didn’t have before, regardless of
implementation in Ecuador, is the first global commons-oriented transition
plan, and several concrete legislative proposals. They are far from perfect,
but they will be a reference that other locales, cities, (bio)regions and
states will be able to make their own adapted versions of it.

In
the meantime, we have to continue the grassroots transformation and rebuild
commons-oriented coalitions at every level, local, regional, national, global.
This will take time, but since infinite growth is not possible in a finite
economy, some type of transition is inevitable. Let’s just hope it will be for
the benefit of the commoners and the majority of the world population.

Essentially,
we need to build the seed forms of the new counter-economy, and the social
movement that can defend, facilitate and expand it. Every political and policy
expression of this is a bonus.

As
for the endgame, you guessed correctly. What distinguishes the effort of the
P2P Foundation, and many of the FLOK researchers, is that we’re not just in the
business of adding some commons and P2P dynamics to the existing capitalist
framework, but aiming at a profound “phase transition”.

To
work for a sustainable society and economy is absolutely crucial for the future
of humanity, and while we respect the freedoms of people to engage in market
dynamics for the allocation of rival goods, we cannot afford a system of
infinite growth and scarcity engineering, which is what capitalism is.

In
other words, today, we consider nature infinite and we believe that infinite
resources should be made scarce in order to protect monopolistic players;
tomorrow, we need to consider nature as a finite resource, and we should
respect the abundance of nature and the human spirit.

So
our endgame is to achieve that fundamental reversal of our civilisation,
nothing less. As you can see from our proposals, we aim for a simultaneous
transformation of civil society, the market and public authorities. And we do
this without inventing or imposing utopias, but by extending the working
prototypes from the commoners and peer producers themselves.

1 comment:

In the wake of the Summit I posed the following additional three questions to Bauwens:

RP: Now that the Summit is over, what would you say was achieved in Quito?

MB: There is no doubt that the Summit itself was successful and that many of the attendees experienced it in that way. The process of getting from the papers to pilot projects and recommendations worked quite well, and of particular interest was the presence of officials from institutions like the planning bureau (Senplades) and the innovation secretariat (Senescyt), along with some others, who demonstrated a commitment to making pilot projects happen.

And as is often the case with conferences, a lot happened through the horizontal connections, where different groups of attendees set about planning projects for the future.

RP: What was not achieved that you had hoped would be achieved, and what was achieved that you had not expected to be achieved?

MB: The key problem is the lack of any clear commitment and engagement of the funding ministries. Just before the conference, it became clear that the President himself was not very aware of the transition project and that a particular minister had even forbidden the attendance of his officials (only to reverse that decision at the very last moment).

So the contradiction is that although the President expressed his support on his weekly radio program, and lower level officials expressed their commitment for pilot projects, there is no clear path for any actual implementation of the legislative proposals.

That doesn't mean that no progress will be made, but it does mean that the initial expectation of FLOK being a “strategic” transition project for Ecuador was unwarranted. Instead there will be proposals to install a small team in the country to monitor and lobby for progress on the implementations.

What went beyond our expectations was the dynamic of the summit itself, and the clear engagement of lower level officials to go forward with pilot projects.

My own experience was that many mini-networks have also been created for post-flok projects outside Ecuador, a number of which will be carried out.

RP: What is the next step, both for Ecuador and for the global P2P movement?

MB: I keep to my original assessment that the production of a generic and integrated commons-oriented transition program is a historical first, and this has generated, and will continue to generate, further interest, and new projects. Both the research team, the p2p foundation, and the flok management are talking to new parties about post-flok projects.

So we have to focus on two things:

First, we have to continue the policy work at the theoretical and policy level aimed at introducing a third way in global and local politics. And for this an important seed has been planted here in Ecuador.

Second, we need to pursue the possibility of creating actual flok-type projects in cities and regions across the world. We are already talking to specific political forces in Europe about commons transitions on the continent.

In Ecuador itself, we can expect some pilot project implementations, but the rest is unclear at this stage.

What was most exciting for me is the engagement of the mayor of Sigchos, Mario Andino, to carry forward the transformation of his region through distributed manufacturing for agricultural machines. I really hope that funding and resources will be forthcoming for that particular project.